This invention relates to an authentication system that uses a living body to authenticate an individual, and more particularly, to a quick, high-precision, authentication technology.
Of various biometric authentication technologies, finger vein authentication is known to be capable of highly precise authentication. Finger vein authentication, which uses vein patterns inside a finger, excels in authentication precision and is harder to falsify and alter than fingerprint authentication, thereby accomplishing a high level of security.
In recent years, cases are increasing in which a biometric authentication device is mounted to a cellular phone, a notebook personal computer (PC), a personal digital assistant (PDA), or other portable terminals, or to such equipment as a locker, a safe, or a printer to ensure the security of the equipment. Biometric authentication is also beginning to be applied to payment and other fields in addition to entrance/exit management, attendance management, login to computers, and the like. With the resultant increase in the number of people who use authentication systems, authentication systems are demanded to improve their throughput. From this viewpoint, 1:N authentication in which only a living body is used to execute authentication without an ID card is preferred to 1:1 authentication in which a living body is presented after registered data is uniquely identified by entering a personal identification number (PIN) or presenting an ID card and which accordingly lowers the throughput.
A biometric authentication device described in JP 2005-215883 A, for example, is a known technology for speedily authenticating a large number of registered persons. The authentication device disclosed in JP 2005-215883 A involves a technology in which registered data is stored in a spatially shrunk state to execute quick matching between pieces of low resolution data.
JP 2008-250508 A discloses a method in which an expected time of arrival of a user at a terminal is used to calculate the probability of the presence of the person in question, and the order of cross-checking 1:N data is accordingly rearranged to find the person in question quickly.
JP 2004-362619 A discloses a technology in which information on the degree of pupil dilation to the iris is used to quickly search a plurality of pieces of registered data, and the amount of registered data is also kept down by omitting iris data registration when a plurality of iris images have similar Hamming distances.